Crying Havoc

For four days, the tide of crisis flooded the Middle East. Then, and only then, as it receded, came Nikita Khrushchev, rattling his rockets and crying "Crisis!" , Surfboarding on the world's fears. Nikita Khrushchev, with his threats of ICBMs and his "not-a-minute-to-lose" call for a summit conference, obviously had every intention of keeping the waters roiled. But his clever cry for the summit also had the sound of a man who knew he was safe before crying his alarms.

For 48 hours last week, after pro-Nasser Iraqi rebels stormed into the royal palace in Baghdad, peace in the Middle East hung on uncertainties. Armies were on the march, air forces on the wing, navies on patrol. Banner lines and bulletins, the grim spectacle of gun-toting soldiers and scurrying foreign ministers that flashed across the TV screens all agitated the world's nerves in the most disturbing crisis since Suez 21 months ago.

Turning Point. Men and nations launched moves without any knowledge of where the moves would lead--action led to reaction, threat to counterthreat. The U.S. moved marines into Lebanon with no certainty that the marines could halt in Lebanon without being drawn into shooting, or whether it might be preferable to the Western world to buttress a counterattack on Iraq. At that moment the answer to a single key question was still hidden behind Iraq's censorship and sealed borders. Was there anything to save in Iraq? At midweek came the answer: no. That was the turning point.

On Wednesday morning, when it became clear that the Iraqi revolt was a resounding success and that there was no longer anyone there whom the U.S. could rescue, the West's action turned into a holding operation in Lebanon and Jordan, bolstering the last few remaining leaders in the Middle East who had ranged themselves beside the West (holding two pawns, while losing a knight, the London Observer described it).

In the downfall of his most hated Arab rival, and in the hour of his own victory, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser put on the appearance of a reasonable man: "Why does America get mad when free men of Iraq say they will protect their agreements, obligations and the peace?" Although the new Iraqi regime quickly signed a defense pact "against aggression" with Nasser, it promised to keep oil flowing to the West. Yet Nasser himself, in the first days of the nerve-jangling week, had been unable to sustain the look of the innocent and casual vacationer sailing through the Mediterranean. The unexpected landings in Lebanon and Jordan so unnerved him that he flew precipitately to Moscow. According to Cairo, Nasser pleaded with Nikita Khrushchev to let well enough alone, and not to send in "volunteers." There was no need for the Russians to move in: Moscow was doing better by professing peace, crying havoc, and denouncing American "colonialist aggressors."

Applause & Bricks. Seeing the turn of events, Russia stepped up its war of nerves. It was to its advantage, the Kremlin decided, to make the world believe that the Russians were going to jump in at any minute. Items:

P: The Soviet government denounced the U.S. landing in Lebanon as an "open act of aggression ... a direct act of war and open piracy," demanded that the U.S. withdraw its forces immediately. Russia cannot remain "indifferent," the Kremlin warned.

P: In the United Nations Security Council, the Soviets introduced a resolution demanding U.S. withdrawal (defeated 8 to 1). and then, anxious to keep the U.S. in an embarrassing position, vetoed a U.S. resolution offering to replace U.S. forces in Lebanon with a U.N. Emergency Force.

P: Soviet troops--from 25 to 40 divisions--thumped conspicuously in summer maneuvers along the Soviet borders with Iran and Turkey, and on Tito's Bulgarian border.

P: If To whip up a sense of crisis, Communist agitators marshaled massive demonstrations against U.S. and British embassies behind the Iron Curtain. In a violent outburst of a kind unseen since the Bolshevik Revolution 40 years ago, 100,000 Muscovites marched on the ten-story U.S. embassy building in Tchaikovsky Street, smashed its front windows in a barrage of stones, bricks and green ink. Far to the east in Peking, half a million men and women marched through the night making a racket for no Americans to hear.

Hurry, Hurry, Hurry. At week's end Nikita Khrushchev played his trump, proposed an emergency big-name conference in Geneva* this week on the Middle East, to include himself, President Eisenhower, Britain's Macmillan, France's De Gaulle, India's Nehru and U.N. Dag Hammarskjold. Surprisingly missing from his invitation list: Mao and Nasser. Every word in the Soviet strong man's message, which bore the sound of his own bluff rhetoric rather than Foreign Ministry jargon, conveyed a sense of urgency: "The guns are already beginning to shoot . . . this awesome moment in history . . . We propose meeting any day and any time--and the sooner the better . . . The world is on the brink of catastrophe."

This shrewdly timed proposal was designed for that ready audience that thinks a summit talk can settle everything, and refuses to believe that Russia would ever resort to brinkmanship. The U.S. could resign itself to a long summer of Russian indignation, parades, protest meetings. All of this uproar might easily obscure the main facts of the week: that in the troubled crossroads of the Middle East, the misty but passionate creed of Arab unity had destroyed every major Western position; and that the West had yet to find a way to live with the creed or to bring it down--and had not even decided which course was more desirable.

*Geneva hotelkeepers, at the peak of the summer rush and with hotels filled, said such a meeting would be impossible before the end of the month.

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